Mama

Meet Mildred Peacock, mother of five, black, and fed up with poverty and the jealous rampages of her husband, Crook. When Crook runs over her foot with his ’59 Mercury, she finally kicks him out to raise her kids on her own.

Mildred is resourceful and sly, sassy and sexy, and she’ll do anything to pay the bills. But she loses job after job, and one man after another, until alcohol and nerve pills are her only comfort. All along though, there are always her kids, the most important things in her life.

From the Midwest to the West Coast to New York, Mama moves with high-spirited realism through the 1960s and 1970s and the promises and disappointments that era meant for all black people.